


he was pointing at the moon

by larkgrace



Category: Stasis (Webcomic)
Genre: Drunken Confessions, M/M, dezzy does the Lip ThingTM, is it really a fandom without a soppy gay confession fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 11:53:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10662036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larkgrace/pseuds/larkgrace
Summary: The crowd shifts and seems to eject Vier, who stumbles and catches himself ribs-first against the bartop. He has a flush high on his cheeks and a smile that he can’t seem to control—he beams at Dezhrean, giggles, and then slumps into the empty stool on Dezhrean’s free side. Vier has an empty glass which he is holding very carefully, considering that it’s empty.“Hi, Dezzy,” he says, eyes fever-bright. “Fun party, huh?” Then he giggles again.Vier Aviglon does not, in Dezhrean’s experience, giggle. Which leads him to pluck the mug from Vier’s hands, place it firmly on the bar, and ask, “Vier, are you drunk?”Vier tries to prop his elbow on the counter, but his sleeve slides on the slick wood. He seems to have lost his doublet at some point, and his tunic laces are loose, so the collar falls open to show the same flush on his cheeks creeping down his chest. “Maybe—ah, maybe a little bit,” he says, through a sudden hiccup. He just keepssmiling,staring at Dezhrean and grinning like he couldn’t possibly be any more pleased with whatever it is he sees.





	he was pointing at the moon

**Author's Note:**

> i straight up could not believe there wasn't already a stasis tag, what a tragedy.
> 
> anyway i've been spamming the vier support squad groupchat with dumb little ficlets for two days and this is the result of one of them! loosely inspired by [this](http://stasis-comic.tumblr.com/post/158955570066/later-on-in-arc-4-there-will-be-a-full-color) preview of a panel that lettie posted on tumblr.
> 
> title from richard siken; the full line is "He was pointing at the moon but I was looking at his hand."

Dezhrean was raised to think that Humani were simple folk, and from what he’s seen most of them are: mild-mannered townspeople living their lives and occasionally being harassed by a stray wight colony. Their festivals are equally simple, but homey: lots of food, mostly variations of meat paired with some kind of bread or potato; perhaps a banner made from an old bedsheet hand-painted with “THANKS VIER & CO. FOR KILLING THE WIGHTS;” and _lots_ of alcohol. The town square is awash with hanging paper lantern light the same buttery yellow color as the mead being poured into the hundreds of flasks like a river of booze.

Ari abandoned her stool for the ground some time ago, but Dezhrean is pretty sure it’s out of preference rather than intoxication. She has one hand wrapped around her mug of hot butter rum—she’d teared up a little at the first sip, and Vier had offered her a gentle pat on the back—and the other is flailing while she recounts the tale of “Dezzy almost getting his stupid Elvish behind impaled by an undead footsoldier” to a circle of enraptured children. Dezhrean sips his own mead and very graciously does not kick her from his own perch.

The crowd shifts and seems to eject Vier, who stumbles and catches himself ribs-first against the bartop. He has a flush high on his cheeks and a smile that he can’t seem to control—he beams at Dezhrean, giggles, and then slumps into the empty stool on Dezhrean’s free side. Vier has an empty glass which he is holding very carefully, considering that it’s empty.

“Hi, Dezzy,” he says, eyes fever-bright. “Fun party, huh?” Then he giggles again.

Vier Aviglon does not, in Dezhrean’s experience, giggle. Which leads him to pluck the mug from Vier’s hands, place it firmly on the bar, and ask, “Vier, are you drunk?”

Vier tries to prop his elbow on the counter, but his sleeve slides on the slick wood. He seems to have lost his doublet at some point, and his tunic laces are loose, so the collar falls open to show the same flush on his cheeks creeping down his chest. “Maybe—ah, maybe a little bit,” he says, through a sudden hiccup. He just keeps _smiling,_ staring at Dezhrean and grinning like he couldn’t possibly be any more pleased with whatever it is he sees.

Dezhrean can hold his alcohol as well as any self-respecting Elf, naturally; he was practically given sweet wine from the teat. He is also a master of the fine art of avoiding a hangover, so he sets aside his own mead and says, “Come on, let’s get you some water.”

“Make him eat something, too!” Ari says. Then she turns back to her audience with, “So of course I threw my knife and pinned the wight’s hand to the wall, and it started groaning _so_ loud, it was really confused…”

Dezhrean stands and pulls Vier to his feet, then lets Vier drape himself over Dezhrean’s shoulder while they skirt the edges of the crowd. Vier’s breath is warm and damp against Dezhrean’s ear.

“Here,” Dezhrean says, and props Vier up against the wall next to a water spigot. He leans down to fill up the waterskin from his belt—less likely to spill everywhere than a tankard—then passes it over to Vier, who’s still smiling, though the excited blush has faded somewhat. “How much did you drink?”

“Not much,” Vier says, and pauses to gulp from the waterskin. When he’s done he doesn’t bother to wipe the shine off his mouth. “’M just…a little fuzzy, really. Ezra used to call me a lightweight.”

“Ezra?” Dezhrean says. Vier hardly ever talks about his life in Westloch.

“Town guy,” Vier says with a wave of his hand. Then, lower, conspiratorial: “He was sort of an asshole.”

“Vier Aviglon, you pray to your goddess with that mouth?” Dezhrean says, as though he does not frequently use much fouler language, sometimes directed at Vier himself. He takes some comfort in the fact that neither of them will ever curse as fluently as Ari.

But it seems to stop Vier’s thoughts in their tracks. Dezhrean can almost see Vier’s line of thought dissolve; his eyes go unfocused for a second, then snap back to attention on Dezhrean. His mouth falls open in a little _o._

“Your mouth,” Vier says. “You always bite your lip. When you’re concentrating.”

“Um,” Dezhrean says. He’s fluent in two languages and they both abandon him to the mercy of Vier’s gaze.

“In Mandeville,” Vier says. “You called me a tempest. You called me a star in the sky.”

Vier seems to be listing sideways, and Dezhrean reaches out with deceptively steady hands to hold his shoulders. “I did,” he says, cottonmouthed.

“I really wanted to kiss you,” Vier says.

Oh, Dezhrean thinks, in a fleeting moment of shock: _that’s_ why he keeps smiling. And then he thinks: here, bathed in yellow lamplight and framed by a harsh brick wall, somehow Vier looks just as soft and familiar as he did curled up in bed and awash with moonlight. As welcoming as he did when the sunlight came through the window to herald the morning and he shaded his eyes with one sleeve-bunched hand.

“I would have liked it,” Dezhrean says. “If you had.”

Vier’s small, ever-present smile grows a little wider. He sways forward—Dezhrean doesn’t know if it’s the alcohol or something else but he’d be happy to catch Vier either way.

“Can I?” Vier says.

Dezhrean _almost_ says yes. He catches the word with his teeth, chews on his bottom lip—Vier’s eyes light up again but that’s just it, isn’t it, Vier is drunk. Dezhrean holds the space where Vier’s doublet sleeves would poof out, the soft place between shoulder and bicep, and wonders if Vier would fall if he let go.

“Er,” Dezhrean says. Damn languages running away again.

Vier’s eyes go wide and his words slur together in his sudden haste. “Not—not now!” he says. “I don’t—I’m— _augh,”_ he says, and presses a hand to his own forehead. His blush is back in full force. “I’m _drunk.”_

“You are,” Dezhrean says.

“I wanna kiss you,” Vier says. “I wanna kiss you sober.”

“Sober?” Dezhrean says.

Vier looks so eager. “I wanna— _urk.”_ He pouts at his sudden hiccup, but persists; Dezhrean can’t help his own small smile. “I wanna go to sleep and wake up when I’m sober and kiss you. Tomorrow. ‘Cause—‘cause I think I have beer breath and your hair’s all fluffy in the mornings. I wanna feel your hair and kiss you. Can I?”

Dezhrean moves his hands. He wraps them around Vier’s torso, instead; lets Vier fall forward so they’re pressed forehead-to-forehead. He’s pretty sure it’s not the alcohol—not entirely.

“Tomorrow,” he says.

Vier laughs. “Rain check,” he says.

“Rain check,” Dezhrean says. Their noses brush, and Vier seems to melt. Not a star or a storm, now—now, Dezhrean thinks, he’s just lovely.

\--

(“Ready to call in that rain check?” Dezhrean asks the next morning.

Vier blinks up from his pillows, bleary-eyed and gentle, limned in sunlight. “Shit,” he says. “So it did happen.”

“Is your morning breath worse than your beer breath?” Dezhrean asks. Vier buries his own face under a pillow, and Dezhrean’s laughs chase him under the sheets.)


End file.
